At a recent closed-door congressional briefing on the administration’s new strategy to combat the Islamic State, a top CIA official left little doubt among those in the room about the agency’s attitude toward the project.

The official’s muted approach to the briefing dovetails with what senior intelligence community officials tell The Huffington Post is deep behind-the-scenes skepticism, ranging from ambivalence to outright opposition, from within the CIA to the administration’s proposal to task the Department of Defense with arming the so-called moderate Syrian rebels.

It is quite likely that their opposition to the move and their decision to let people know how they felt is somewhat motivated by a turf war. The Pentagon is being given their job since it is an open secret that the CIA has been arming the “moderate” rebels for years now.

But there is no reason to think they are inventing criticisms of the plan.

[T]he CIA has already been covertly equipping Syrian rebels at the instruction of the White House, but has come to find the fighters increasingly disorganized and radicalized as the conflict goes on, with U.S.-supplied arms winding up in the hands of more radical fighters.

[…]

One Democratic member of Congress said that the CIA has made it clear that it doubts the possibility that the administration’s strategy could succeed.

“I have heard it expressed, outside of classified contexts, that what you heard from your intelligence sources is correct, because the CIA regards the effort as doomed to failure,” the congressman said in an email. “Specifically (again without referring to classified information), the CIA thinks that it is impossible to train and equip a force of pro-Western Syrian nationals that can fight and defeat Assad, al-Nusra and ISIS, regardless of whatever air support that force may receive.”

Of course, that understates the issue. A more likely scenario is that the moderates will betray their Pentagon trainers and ally with al-Nusra and/or ISIS in order to defeat Assad. And when they do so, the weapons supplied by the United States will flow into those terrorist organizations.

Think about the Tea Party. It demands reduced spending, reduced debt, and a balanced budget. Now suddenly everyone has forgotten that as we start to go to war with ISIS with more money that we don’t have. The budget of the Defense Department will only be expanded.

And in a few years, I’m sure we will have a terrorist attack in time to scare the voters away from Rand Paul and into Hillary’s welcoming talons.